Movie review: Notes on a Scandal

Along with Testament, Penny mentioned in comments of an earlier review of mine that Notes on a Scandal, the 2006 psychological drama that scored four Oscar nominations, has a child actor with Down syndrome in the cast. Penny said:

Child actors with Down syndrome occasionally have small roles in films where their visible difference is not much commented upon, nor does it become a major plot point. I'm thinking of Testament (1983), for example, and last year's Notes on a Scandal. Both smaller, serious dramas, with women in the leading roles--maybe that's no coincidence?

I got a chance to see and write about Testament last weekend, and now I've seen Notes on a Scandal too. Unlike in Testament, where the child with Down does not seem to be used as a signifier of anything else within the plot, I do think Ben, the 12-year-old son of Cate Blanchett's character, Sheba Hart, carries more symbolic meaning than the average nondisabled child in an adult drama. But the story is emotionally and psychologically dense, so he doesn't simply stand for unspoiled innocence, or parental sacrifice, or unruliness, as developmentally disabled folks frequently do in fictional stories. I think Ben, played by Max Lewis, does symbolize all those things, but there are also some great family scenes where I think his presence is fully integrated and normalized in ways rarely seen in film.

Based on the novel by Zoe Heller, which was on the short list for the Man Booker Prize back in 2003, Notes is about two women: the aging, bitterly lonely lesbian history teacher, Barbara Covett, played by the fabulous Judi Dench, and Sheba Hart, the straight, married art teacher who has an affair with a 15-year-old student. The events of the story are narrated as Barbara keeps a journal of her obsessive relationship with Sheba, and she's a captivating and disturbing "unreliable narrator" in the tradition of Holden Caufield or Humbert Humbert. (For full coverage of the movie's complex psychodrama -- complete with spoilers -- check out this review at Blogcritics.)

Upon meeting Sheba's family -- her much older husband, teenage daughter and Ben -- Barbara caustically refers to the children as "a pocket princess" and "a somewhat tiresome court jester." Barbara's desire for Sheba and jealousy of her family life leads her to manipulate events to break Sheba from her family. Her last name isn't "Covett" for nothing.

Two of the film's most dramatic scenes hinge on the role Ben plays in his mother's life. After a tryst with her underage lover, Steven, in her art studio behind the family's London flat, Sheba first waxes nostalgic about a Siouxie and the Banshees' album Steven sees. When he then picks up a wizard's hat Sheba is making for Ben's upcoming school play and jokes about such a childish thing being for a 12-year-old, Sheba tells him her son has Down syndrome. It's a sobering moment for the characters, filled with complex subtext: she hadn't told Steven about her son's disability, Steven is the picture of boyish youthful perfection, she's long past her carefree punk rocker days, Ben represents her life's realities.

In another scene, a grief-stricken Barbara has just left her beloved cat at the local vet to be euthanized when she flags down a car loaded with the Hart family on their way to Ben's school play. On the sidewalk, Barbara demands Sheba stay with her and abandon her family plans, suggesting she will reveal Sheba's illegal and adulterous behavior if she doesn't get her way. The choice would be wrenching without it involving a developmentally disabled child, but Ben is used specifically to ratchet up that effect (very similar to the blackmailing of the father of a very ill daughter in Derailed, by the way).

I mentioned that developmental disability in fiction often symbolizes an unruliness in life. A classic example is Lennie in Steinbeck's novella Of Mice and Men, where the developmentally disabled man accidentally kills animals and a woman with uncontrolled physical strength. In Notes, I think the unruliness Ben represents is equal parts adult disenchantment with life's realities and joyous familial free-spiritedness. Sheba, describing to Barbara how she fell into the affair with Steven, says:

This is going to sound silly, but something in me felt... entitled. You know, I've been up to my head all my life, a decent wife, a dutiful mother coping with Ben. This voice inside me kept saying "why shouldn't you be bad, why shouldn't you transgress? I mean, you've earned the right."

And on disenchantment more generally:

My father always used to say... you know, on the tube...? "Mind the gap." ....It's just the distance between life as you... dream it and... life as it is.

Again, any family with all it's adult obligations would serve to illustrate this, but Ben is used to intensify the effect. This may not be an inaccurate portrayal, but it does seem to be the main or sole dynamic signified by children with developmental disabilities (physical ones, too) in fiction.

Yet I think Ben offers more complexity than that, even on the theme of unruliness. Barbara is attracted to Sheba's bohemian artsy-ness and describes her as "different" from her other colleagues at school. They first meet when Barbara steps in to help Sheba with an altercation between two students -- an unruliness Sheba cannot manage on her own. In thanks, Sheba invites Barbara to lunch with her family, where Barbara finds herself observing casual family intimacy that includes a ritual after-lunch family dance. Young Ben is a key part of this free-spirited unruliness, the happy abandon of family togetherness that best reveals the loving connections Sheba endangers with her affair and Barbara threatens with her jealousy.

Penny wondered, in her comment quoted above, if "both smaller, serious dramas, with women in the leading roles--maybe that's no coincidence?" I don't think it is a coincidence that films centered on women's stories seem to portray parenting of children with Down syndrome more realistically than we've historically seen. (Take that observation for what it's worth -- I'm a student of disability in fiction but I'm not a parent and don't currently spend any time with children with developmental disabilities.) But I also think that the portrayal of these children, in Testament and Notes, by children who actually have disabilities is a function of the roles being small and not competitive roles for established actors. Adult developmentally disabled characters are typically played by nondisabled actors because some well-known star gains prestige from the role.